ProWorkflow

Pros

It makes it easy to manage projects with an associate. Although there are only two of us and the client, there is a lot of back and forth on each project. It used to be hard to keep track of where we were and who needed to take the next step, but now it's simple. I also like the ease of tracking time on each step of a project. I can do a better job of estimating new projects based on the actual time for older projects, and I can see if a project is out of sync. The customer support is fantastic.

Cons

I really wish it had a feature that is missing. It has a great invoicing feature, but I really need an accounts receivable component. There is a list of all outstanding invoices, but there's way to keep track if a client makes only a partial payment or if there are several individual invoices. I can track individual invoices, but there is no way to know the total balance due from a specific client. I realize this is not something the software is designed to do, but it creates extra work for me because I have to record all the invoices and payments on a manual spreadsheet to have complete information.

Pros

Proworkflow requires minimal effort to stay on top of your business. I think the importance of this gets overlooked too often. Setting Quotes and invoices are minutes at most, and setting projects and adding tasks can be done on the fly with little investment of your time. You can see the impact on resources scheduling before you even finish setting up your planning your tasks. I don't have enough words how valuable of a tool this has been without scrambling our brains to operate.

Cons

If you need a more sophisticated system for proposals and invoices Proworkflow is not there. It will give you just enough flexibility to customize a quote and send your invoices to quickbooks/Xero directly from a quote or proposal. But if you need quote/proposal templates for multi page terms and conditions, and percentage invoicing or progress billing, be prepared to do these manually.

Pros

I've been using PWF for a year now and see there is potential for this to be a convenient, easy to use tool once development improvements have been implemented. The support staff are friendly and provide assistance where possible. The software enables us to pay per user and grants multiple users to access the platform with individually allocated access rights, allowing us to set security levels pending the role of the user and adjust our monthly payments pending the number of consultants we currently have on board. You are able to live track time which is helpful for our consultants in allocating to billable projects. Review of time entered and staff workload is also a useful function.

Cons

I feel this software is still in its developmental stage and has a lot of improvements to be implemented. For example, integration with MYOB is poor and non usable, invoicing fields need expanding (ie choice of PO or street address, ABN field for recipient, etc), templates and emailing tools are very basic and limited, contact listings are restrictive and missing vital fields (ie ABN, PO Box, etc) or requiring double handling (ie single contacts need to be connected to a non existent company, for example where no company is applicable you have to create fake one to connect them contact to), reports need to have more functionality and retrospective time reports come up with errors in date ranges making data inaccurate, add/edit tasks need further options such as sort functions, window resizing/positioning needs to be added, pro bono projects cannot be marked as non billable unless you tick them off as "invoiced" (which is incorrect and misleading). These are just a few of the issues we have recently been struggling with.

Pros

- Great support for Agile sprints, you can tell that the Agile methodology was thought of in the product's design, offering so many tools and features that enable working on sprints and other fast-paced projects.

- Nice Milestone and Kanban visualisation as well. As I said earlier, points your attention to the most important thing to note; straight to the point.

- Great value for money too.

Cons

- Not great support for all invoicing scenarios; that would be useful to integrate into some projects that perhaps require follow-on funding or fractional and/or incremental payments.

- It doesn't have great support for extra-platform communication with colleagues and third parties that are outside the platform, this could be useful when interfacing with clients who may not be registered users

Pros

I love how easy it is to manage multiple projects. I can keep track of where I and my associate are on any job. Even when I work alone on a project, I use ProWorkflow to keep track of every step. Having an archive of all previous projects, including related documents, is very useful. Being able to create templates for tasks, invoices, etc. saves a lot of time and effort. Although I rarely have any problems, when I have had issues, customer service has been outstanding.

Cons

Since I bill for projects incrementally, I wish there was a better way to invoice and keep track of incremental payments. ProWorkflow reminds you to invoice at the end of a project for the entire amount. There's no way to set up invoices for incremental payments, and there's no way to show an invoice partially paid. So I if receive a partial payment, I have to mark the original invoice paid (or delete it) and issue a new invoice for the balance. I'd really like an accounting component to be able to keep track of payments instead of having to have another system for that.